Detour (1945) Gets a 4K Restoration on the Criterion Collection

The Criterion Collection released Detour to Blu-ray on March 19, 2019. Edgar G. Ulmer directed the film starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage, and Claudia Drake.

‘Detour’ Criterion Synopsis

From Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist finds himself with a dead body on his hands and nowhere to run—a waking nightmare that goes from bad to worse when he picks up the most vicious femme fatale in cinema history, Ann Savage’s snarling, monstrously conniving drifter Vera. Working with no-name stars on a bargain-basement budget, B auteur Edgar G. Ulmer turned threadbare production values and seedy, low-rent atmosphere into indelible pulp poetry. Long unavailable in a format in which its hard-boiled beauty could be fully appreciated, Detour haunts anew in its first major restoration.

Read the full summary, and listen to our film review.

Detour was restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Cinémathèque Française. Restoration funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.

Special Features

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen, a 2004 documentary featuring interviews with actor Ann Savage and filmmakers Roger Corman, Joe Dante, and Wim Wenders
• New interview with film scholar Noah Isenberg, author of Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins 
• New program about the restoration
• Janus Films rerelease trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic and poet Robert Polito

New cover by Jennifer Dionisio